Gabe rubbed the steam away from the bathroom mirror. With his right hand he made a fist and then flexed his biceps. It looked like someone had slipped a softball under his skin. Along his forearm, veins popped. Nobody at school made fun of Gabe anymore. And lately girls had been looking at him. Talking to him. Sometimes, he thought, even flirting with him. He was no longer invisible.
If only he had been able to put on this weight before football season had ended. It would have been so much easier to push up and down the field if he’d weighed thirty pounds more. Except Coach Harper might have asked awkward questions, the way he sometimes quizzed the other football players about how exactly they had managed to bulk up. But now football season was over, and Gabe didn’t have Coach Harper as a teacher.
“You’ve got to try to get bigger if you want to get any better,” one of the seniors on the team had told him. Well, Gabe had tried. He had done all that he could. Lifted weights until he felt like his arms would snap. Choked down protein powder drinks that were supposed to taste like chocolate but instead tasted more like chalk.
But nothing had helped. At least until now. Now he had the only thing that really could help.
These days his shirts strained across his pecs. He could bench forty more pounds than he’d ever done before. Yesterday, for the first time in his life, he had grabbed the ten-foot-high basketball rim while doing a layup. Soaring through the air, he had felt like he could fly. He had felt invincible.
Gabe’s mom was sweet but clueless. She thought that if you worked hard, things eventually paid off.
But sometimes all that hard work needed a little extra help.
It was like diabetics whose bodies needed insulin because they didn’t make enough. Or people who were depressed because their brains didn’t make the right chemicals. Gabe was suffering from an imbalance. His body just didn’t make hormones in the right proportions. Which was why he hadn’t grown in the right proportions.
He had asked some of the guys on the team how they had managed to remake their bodies, and one had finally explained it to him—and eventually, as the season was ending, slipped him the number of this guy named Tyler who could hook him up.
They’d met at a restaurant near Gabe’s school. Before Tyler showed up, Gabe ordered some food, but he was too nervous to eat it. Besides, it looked kind of greasy, and what if it sent the wrong message, like he wasn’t serious about being fit? Gabe had been slowly shredding his paper napkin when a guy walked out of the kitchen area carrying a white takeout bag and slid into the seat across from him.
Even though it was nearly freezing outside, he was wearing a white sleeveless T-shirt and long navy-blue basketball shorts. The dude was seriously ripped. Not an ounce of fat on him, just pure corded muscle. He was like a walking advertisement for his product.
“Gabe?” It came out more like a grunt.
“Yeah.” Gabe hoped his own voice didn’t sound shaky.
Tyler nodded, but didn’t offer his own name. “Did you come alone?”
“Yeah.”
The guy kept his eyes on Gabe’s face until Gabe grew uncomfortable, then slowly slid the bag across the table.
As he had been instructed, Gabe reached across the table and shook Tyler’s hand. In his palm were ten twenty-dollar bills, folded in half. Birthday and chore money he had been saving for a mountain bike. Without counting them or acknowledging them in any way, Tyler pocketed them and then left with another nod.
Gabe made himself wait a few minutes before he put the white paper bag in his backpack. Then a few more minutes before he picked up his skateboard and left. He didn’t even look inside the bag until he got back to his room.
Then Eldon had walked in, surprising him. After having his own room all his life, Gabe kept forgetting that he could no longer be sure of having any privacy. When Eldon came in, Gabe was still examining the bag’s contents—a few syringes, a vial of clear liquid, and a bottle of pills. A two-week supply of two anabolic steroids.
Eldon stared. It was too late to hide everything or try to think of a cover story.
“Gabe, dude?” he said. “Is that what I think it is?”
Eldon and Kali, his mom, had moved in after Kali had been diagnosed with breast cancer, lost her job, and fallen behind on her rent. Before they came here, they had been living in their friend Danny’s unheated garage. They were Samoan, both built like squares. If Gabe was downstairs and Eldon was upstairs, he could feel the whole house shake when Eldon walked down the hall. And even though Kali had lost a lot of weight because of the chemo, she was still a sagging mountain of a woman.
Eldon lowered his voice. “Are those steroids?”
The heat climbed Gabe’s face all the way up to his hairline. “You can’t tell anyone.”
With a sigh, Eldon shook his head. “You know I won’t. But I don’t know, Gabe. Is it right?”
Eldon clearly didn’t have an imbalance. He had no idea what it was like. “It’s not like I’m going to be smoking dope or using heroin,” Gabe said. “This is only so I can improve myself.”
“Then why not do it, like, the natural way?” Eldon’s voice was mild, but Gabe still felt irritated.
“Where have you been?” he said. “I have been doing nothing but lifting at school or going down to the basement to use my dad’s old weights. I’m drinking protein or weight-gainer shakes three or four times a day. But it’s not working. It’s easy for you to say I should do things the natural way. You’re built like a bulldozer. And I’m a toothpick.”
Even after he got the steroids, it still took Gabe a week to work up the courage to push a needle into his skin. He found step-by-step advice on the Internet and read it over and over until he had it memorized. On Netflix he watched a really old football movie, The Program, to see how the players injected steroids.
Still, the first time he used a syringe to pull fluid from the vial, tilted it up, and squeezed out a drop to get rid of any air bubbles, and then jammed the needle into his hip, Gabe had been so afraid that he might die. His heart was racing, his palms were wet, and his head felt light. Would you even know you were dying? Or would you just suddenly wink out?
The next time it was a little easier. Same for the time after that. So every Tuesday and Friday for the past five weeks, Gabe had gone into his room and locked the door. He didn’t need to hear any more comments from Eldon. And there, alone in his room, surrounded by Little League trophies, his homework, and posters of his favorite bands, Gabe jabbed a needle into his hip.
The steroids changed everything. He got bigger. He got faster. He got stronger. And girls noticed him now. They had never noticed before. Every day before he went to school, he rolled his shirt sleeves to precisely the right level to show off his new biceps. He brushed his teeth and even his tongue, gargled with mouthwash so minty it burned his mouth. He made sure his hair was perfectly mussed before he walked out the door.
He still had to work hard, of course he did, but the steroids had given him the base that had been lacking.
There was a knock on the bathroom door. “I need to go, Gabe.” It was his little sister, Brooke.
Gabe gritted his teeth. The house was really too small for five people. Lately it just felt like he was never alone. Not even in the bathroom.
“Okay. Just a sec.” He wrapped a towel around his waist. As he turned away from the mirror, he caught a glimpse of ugly, red acne speckling the tops of his shoulders. He had heard it was a side effect of steroids, but he had never thought it would affect him. He draped a second towel across his shoulders, hoping it would hide it.
“Gabe!” His little sister’s voice was like a mosquito’s, an annoying whine. “Now!”
“All right!” he shouted. “Can’t you just give me a second?” He wrenched back the door. Brooke must have been leaning against it, because suddenly she tumbled in, her face scrunching up and her mouth opening as she gathered her breath to cry.
“Shut it!” he roared in her face, startling her so much she went completely silent.
Gabe stalked past her, his teeth still clenched.